Kai Ryssdal: Take a moment now to consider the chili pepper. There are more than 10,000 varieties. We eat 'em. We season our food with them. They go into arthritis creams and shampoos, pesticides and, yes, pepper sprays. In 2007 -- the last year we have the data for -- American farmers grew more than 800,000 tons of chili peppers. Twenty-six million tons worldwide, half of that in China.

So, needless to say, they're big business. Beyond the commercial, though, chili peppers are important in cuisines and cultures all over the world. Which helps explain why I found myself shopping for chilies in a Mexican market the other day with a chef...

Kurt Friese: I'm Kurt Friese. I'm the chef.

And an agroecologist.

Kraig Kraft: Hi, I'm Kraig Kraft. I'm the agroecologist.

A what? Let me just say he knows more about chilies than you and I would ever want to know. ...

On Thursday, Charlotte Talks with explore our love for all things spicy. Join the show Thursday at 9am on 90.7 WFAE or listen online here.

Here in the South we like our spicy food. Whether it be hot wings, chili, ethnic food, or just sprinkling Tabasco sauce on just about anything, Southerners like to spice things up. Chef Kurt Friese was so interested in what makes spicy food hot, he followed the chili trail into many parts of the world including the Deep South and Mexico. He wrote a book about his experience called Chasing Chiles: Hot Spots Along the Pepper Trail. We’ll look at the world of spicy food, what some of the hottest chili’s in the world are, what the sensation of spicy/hot does for our food palate and share some great spicy food recipes when Charlotte Talks spices things up.Guests
Peter Reinhart – Chef-on-Assignment, Johnson and WalesChef Kurt Friese – Co-Author, Chasing Chiles: Host Spots Along the Pepper Trail

Heat olive oil in a large stockpot over medium-high heat. Sauté ground beef, onion and garlic with a pinch of salt and pepper for 10-12 minutes, until browned, breaking up meat as you stir. Add bell peppers, corn, and hot peppers. Continue to cook over medium heat until peppers are tender, about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Add the remaining ingredients and gently bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 2-3 hours, then turn off heat and allow to cool before refrigerating. Reheat when ready to eat. Serve with grated cheese, chopped onions, corn bread, tortilla chips, or whatever accompaniments turn you on.

Iowa Press Citizen - April 22, 2011

Local chef and restaurateur Kurt Friese’s love of chili peppers dates back to his days in fifth grade at Maryland Elementary School in Bexley, Ohio.

“We had a jalapeno-eating contest, and I ate 20 jalapenos. I lost to a student who ate 22,” Friese said.

That love evolved over the years as Friese, who owns Devotay, 117 N. Linn St., Iowa City, with his wife Kim, delved deeper into the food and restaurant industry.

Last month, he released his second book, “Chasing Chiles, Hot Spots Along the Pepper Trail,” with co-authors Gary Nabhan and Kraig Kraft.

The book investigates the impact of climate change on chili peppers grown across the globe.

“You can’t look at one weather event and say, ‘See there’s climate change,’” Friese said. “You need to look at longer trends, and one way to do that is by looking at our food sources. Through the lens of chili peppers, we can see what’s happening.”

Their backgrounds -- Friese, the chef; Nabhan, an ecologist and ethnobotanist with a penchant for spicy foods; and Kraft, an agro-ecologist who spent two years studying chilies while earning his Ph.D -- provided for a unique and wide-ranging expertise on the subject of peppers, Friese said.

The three spent a year traveling to study chili crops in places ranging from the Sonora Desert and the Yucatan to Florida, Maryland and Connecticut.

Their travels confirmed what they’d already believed – that changes to the climate were altering where and how crops can be grown, he said.

“St. Augustine, Fla., used to be the center for citrus growing, but nobody can grow there anymore,” Friese said. “I hope (the book) contributes to ending the silly debates going on. That’s all political and rhetorical, not scientific … We can’t foretell what change will do, that’s unknown; but the fact that change is taking place is undeniable.”

The book also features more than a dozen custom recipes developed by Friese.

Friese’s first book is titled, “A Cook’s Journey: Slow Food in the Heartland,” and he edits a local food magazine, Edible Iowa River Valley.

He has operated Devotay restaurant for nearly 15 years and is a local leader in the growing Slow Food movement.

For now, Friese said selling the book has kept him busy.

He recently spoke at Harvard University and appeared on National Public Radio’s Marketplace, where he cooked with host Kai Ryssdal. Next week, he and Kraft will speak on Talk of Iowa on Iowa Public Radio.

The chili pepper has transformed cuisines around the world since it was first brought from the “New World.” As farmers began growing chiles in more and more places, the plants changed and adapted, creating new varieties. Our guests celebrate and fight to preserve the world’s diverse peppers.

There are plenty of great books out there on global warming, all full of dismaying facts and figures. But never before has our changing climate been viewed through the fiery lens of the chili pepper. In Chasing Chiles, Kraig Kraft (along with co-authors Kurt Michel Friese and Gary Paul Nabhan) embark on a "spice odyssey" across the US and Mexico. Their mission: talk to farmers, track rare species, and expose their tongues to the great spice spectrum of the mighty chili.

Listen to the podcast of this interview via iTunes, or just click here to listen, right-click to download.

"Chasing Chiles" brings the problem of climate change to our plates by exploring one of North America's most diverse food plants: chile peppers.

Kurt Michael Friese and two other chile lovers went on a year-long adventure to experience some of America’s most interesting pepper varieties – from datil peppers only found in St. Augustine, Florida to the wild chiltepin peppers of Sorona, Mexico. They tasted local cuisine and experienced various pepper cultures firsthand.

But Chasing Chiles: Hot Spots Along the Pepper Trailgives the reader insight into more than just tasting and cooking these fiery foods. Friese and his colleagues spoke with farmers who are struggling to stay afloat (sometimes literally) as climate change wreaks havoc on weather patterns and, therefore, their yields.

Earth Eats spoke with Friese from his home in Iowa. Along with co-authoring Chasing Chiles, he is the owner and Chef Emeritus of Devotay in Iowa City and the publisher of Edible Iowa River Valley magazine.

Spice Dream Team

Annie Corrigan: The other two authors have very fancy titles: Kraig Kraft is an agroecologist and Gary Paul Nabhan is an ethnobotanist.

Kurt Michael Friese: Science geeks!

AC: As the chef, what did you bring to the pepper hunting team?

KMF: I brought a passion for chiles of course, but all three of us have that. I also brought a certain amount of culinary expertise and knowing what to do with these things once they come off the plant. My co-authors know a lot about the plants: how they grow, why and where. My job was to deal with them once they were harvested.

Native Pepper Dishes

AC: There are recipes in the book as well. It’s nice a way for folks to actually experience the chiles they’re reading about. I’d love for you to talk us through the pilau (pronounced PER-low).

KMF: Good for you, you pronounced it properly. I was roundly chastised and identified as a Yankee when I got to St. Augustine (Florida) and pronounced it pee-LAO.

It’s a rice dish. It’s a relative of the more familiar jambalaya or paella. It’s a real staple in Northeast Florida, part of the so-called Cracker cuisine there. There is no church basement supper that goes without pilau. It can be made with just about any meat, and in fact one of the popular meats to use is turtle meat. More commonly, though, it’s chicken, shrimp or some types of pork.

The highlight of it is the native pepper of that area called the datil, which is a wonderful chile pepper native to St. Augustine. Just about everyone has a five gallon bucket in their backyard with one or two plants growing out of it. But, you don’t seem to be able to find that chile any place else, which is one of the things that attracted us to it. It’s pretty hot, but it’s got a sweet aspect to it as well. A unique flavor. I really enjoyed it. We’ve also got a recipe in that book for a datil pepper sauce that is my wife’s favorite. I now end up having to make it every summer.

AC: If you can’t get these datil peppers anywhere but in Florida, had you experienced them before this adventure?

KMF: I had experience a bottled sauce that is fairly popular among the folks who search for this sort of stuff called Dat’l Do-It. It’s the one way that people around the rest of the country might be able to easily find this chile pepper.

AC: One other dish caught my eye, but it only received a two-sentence mention. It was the tabasco ice cream you tried at Robin’s in Henderson, Louisiana. How was that?

KMF: It does strike some as odd, but I wasn’t too surprised by it after an experience I had 20-something years ago in Santa Fe, New Mexico where I found a jalapeno Blizzard at the local Dairy Queen. So, it wasn’t quite that weird to me.

It is what it sounds like it is: a vanilla ice cream base with Tabasco sauce in it. It’s very simple to make for anybody who makes ice cream. It’s fascinating because it’s cold and hot at the same time. I think that’s the cool thing about it.

Drawn To The Fire

AC: One of the first sentences attributed to you in the book is, “It’s never too hot for me.” Surely you came across a pepper on your travels that challenged your spicy tolerance.

KMF: Oh yes! There are several, and that is a bit of braggadocio I suppose. There are some peppers out there that aren’t even meant to be eaten. There’s the now very famous Bhut Jolokia (or Naga Jolokia) from India. It is currently the reigning hottest pepper ever. The measurement called the Scoville Unit measures it as five to ten times hottest than a habanero. It was developed not so much as a food but as a weapon, to be used as pepper spray and that kind of thing. If you look around on You Tube, you’ll find some rather foolish people eating this pepper and trying to be all macho about it and it never ends well.

AC: So you haven’t tried it?

KMF: No, and I won’t try that one. I can do a habanero, but even that is sort of pushing the limits for me. There are some hot sauces out there that are capsaicin extract (capsaicin is the chemical in a chile that produces that hot sensation). Those sauces are just foolish, and it’s not wise to damage your palate that way.

AC: Why do you suppose so many of us enjoy being in pain while we eat, or challenging ourselves with these super hot peppers?

KMF: There are some scientists who think it’s very much like a drug addiction. There’s no doubt that chile peppers do create an endorphin rush, and I think that’s what draws people back to it more and more.

The Weirding Of The Planet

AC: This book is really an exploration of global climate change with the main characters being the many varieties of chile peppers. It talks about droughts and floods in Sorona, Mexico; cold temperatures and floods in Florida; hurricane aftermath in Louisiana. Basically the gist is that we have unpredictable weather patterns that only seem to be getting weirder. What are the farmers doing to continue to grow food in spite of these horrible conditions?

KMF: If there’s a real underlying theme to the book I think it would have to be resilience. We wanted to talk to the farmers and the chefs in these various regions to find out how they’re reacting to these things, because they’re on the front lines.

We see in the news that global climate change is coming, but the fact is it’s already here. People are experiencing it everyday. It’s not like how you see it in the movies where suddenly the oceans rise twelve feet. It doesn’t work like that.

So, farmers are reacting by changing what they grow in many instances, or no longer growing these peppers at all, or finding them in other places. In the case of Sonora and the chiltepin peppers, it’s not domesticated. People wander out into the desert and harvest this by hand in the wild. Weather patterns are changing and decreasing its numbers and making it quite valuable in fact.

AC: An interesting part of this is when you were speaking to some farmers who were saying, “I can grow avocados, I can grow all these other things here. If only my grandfather could see what I can grow now!”

KMF: That is a great example of what’s going on. St. Augustine, where we saw those datil peppers, used to be the headquarters of citrus growing in Florida, but oranges can’t grow anywhere near there anymore because the climate has changed and citrus has moved south.

Farmers need to be able to adapt, not only to the new climate, but to the new pests. There are economic impacts as well. They find themselves growing different stuff, competing with different farmers, and trying to sell to different markets than they did when they started out or when their father did this.

The Reality Of Field To Plate

AC: The tone of the book is part joy when you eat the food, experience the pepper culture, and meet the people, and part anger, fear and frustration, when you talk to the farmers. It’s a good reminder of just what it takes to get good food to our plates. If you could speak for the farmers, what do you think they would want consumers to know about what they’re experiencing these days?

KMF: Consumers need to be prepared to be resilient, too. The sorts of changes that I and other food advocates around the country and around world have been talking about – about a more localized and sustainable food system with much higher biodiversity – are going to happen, I guarantee it. The question is, is it going to happen the easy way or the hard way. The easy way is by no means easy, but the hard way is desperately, dustbowl hard. Nature insists on biodiversity, and if it’s not there, nature will thrust it upon us, and it won’t be pretty.

Keeping Food Dollars Local

AC: In the final chapter of the book, you present five principles that you think will help combat climate change. But you also acknowledge what some people might feel about the immense and complex issue of climate change: “…we feel like our personal efforts are mere drops in the bucket, and the bucket is not only large but leaking badly.” Talk to those folks.

KMF: There are a lot of people who think this is way beyond them, but it really does start with very simple decisions about where you get your food and trusting your food.

Most people, if you ask them their doctor’s name, they can tell you their doctor’s name. If you ask them their dentist’s name, they can tell you that. They might even be able to tell you their banker’s name or their lawyer’s name. But, ask them their farmer’s name, and they say, “What?” That’s really strange to me. It’s so important what we put into our bodies – it literally becomes us – it seems like we should put more attention and thought into that than we do into who our lawyer is.

So, knowing your farmer and obtaining your food locally is probably the simplest thing you can do right off the bat to help with these issues. Plus, it tastes better and it’s better for you.

There are economic impacts as well. I live in Johnson County, Iowa. We’ve got about 50,000 households here, and if each of those households redirected just $10 of its existing grocery budget every week for buying something local – the farmers market, a CSA, eggs from the farmer down the road – it would keep nearly $26 million in our local economy every year. Translate that to bigger cities – Indianapolis, Chicago, New York – and think of the impact of $10, $20, or $30 that you keep right there, rather than sending it off to China by way of Fayetteville, Arkansas.